Cassandra Webb develops the power to see the future. Forced to confront revelations about her past, she forges a relationship with three young women bound for powerful destinies, if they can all survive a deadly present.
Chuck says:
One of the great blunders in recent Hollywood history involves the executives at Sony Pictures, circa 2000, rejecting a deal that would have given them the rights to every superhero in the Marvel Universe. The comic book company had just filed for bankruptcy and were in desperate need of a cash infusion. So, when Sony exec Yair Landau was sent to inquire about their studio obtaining the rights to Spiderman, Marvel chief Ike Perlmutter had an alternate proposition for him – take all our characters for $25 million. When Landau reported the offer to his bosses they rejected it, saying, “No one gives a @#$% about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for Spider-Man.” This deal was closed for $10 million. As for the rest of the characters, apparently a great many people gave a @#$% about them.
Ever since realizing their mistake, Sony has been trying to jump on the superhero bandwagon with various incarnations of the webslinger as well as films focused on ancillary characters in his universe, which they have the rights to. The result has been misguided efforts like the overblown “Venom” (2018) and its sequel, the misguided “Morbius” (2022) and now, the absolutely awful “Madame Web,” a mess of a movie that is at times so incredibly inane it may have a future as a cult classic.
A prologue takes us to the Amazon where a pregnant scientist, Constance (Kerry Bishe) is searching for a rare spider with healing abilities. She’s bitten by one of them, which passes on its abilities to her unborn child. However, a betrayal by her guide, Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim) leads to her death, though her daughter survives and is named Cassandra (brush up on your Greek mythology to catch the significance of the name…)
Jump ahead to 2002 and Cassie (Dakota Johnson) is a New York City paramedic who has always been, socially, a step behind everyone else. On a call one day, she has a near death experience which unlocks some latent psychic abilities. Now she can see the future, something she has in common Ezekiel who has come to the Big Apple to track down Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeny) Anya Corazon (Isabel Merced) and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor). He has foreseen that these three teenagers will kill him, and he wants to beat them to the punch. Fortunately, Cassie can see what is to play out and comes to their rescue.
Overplotted and underwritten, the film contains some of the most simplistic dialogue in recent memory as well as character actions that make little sense. Johnson does her level best to bring a bit of fun to this and she’s the best part of the movie while her young counterparts accord themselves as well as they can. However, even the most skilled thespians would be unable to salvage this lifeless, desperate product. I don’t require an Aaron Sorkin-like script or perfect plotting from a superhero movie but on the other hand, I expect more than the nonsensical mess concocted by four “writers” presented here.
In the end, I can’t help but blame that nameless executive at Sony for rejecting the deal to control all the Marvel characters. Had he done that, the present-day Sony honchos wouldn’t have had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to build a movie around an ancillary, disposable character. It certainly is a tangled web we weave…
1.5 Stars
